Thursday, August 5, 2010

(Witchcraft & Magic in Europe)

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

The roots of European witchcraft and magic lie in Hebrew and other ancient Near Eastern cultures and in the Celtic, Nordic, and Germanic traditions of the Continent. For two millennia, European folklore and ritual have been imbued with the belief in the supernatural, yielding a rich trove of histories and images. A series that combines traditional approaches of political, legal, and social historians with critical syntheses of cultural anthropology, historical psychology, and gender studies, "Witchcraft and Magic in Europe" provides a modern, scholarly survey of the supernatural beliefs of Europeans from ancient times to the present day. Each of the six volumes in the series contains the work of distinguished scholars chosen for their expertise in a particular era or region. The eighteenth century saw the end of witch trials everywhere.The authors chart the process of and reasons for the decriminalization of witchcraft, but also challenge the widespread assumption that Europe then became "disenchanted."